Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai

Water sprites, mountain goblins, shape-shifting animals, and the monsters known as yokai have long haunted the Japanese cultural landscape. This history of the strange and mysterious in Japan seeks out these creatures in folklore, encyclopedias, literature, art, science, games, manga, magazines, and movies, exploring their meanings in the Japanese cultural imagination and offering an abundance of valuable and, until now, understudied material. Michael Dylan Foster tracks yokai over three centuries, from their appearance in seventeenth-century natural histories to their starring role in twentieth-century popular media. Focusing on the intertwining of belief and commodification, fear and pleasure, horror and humor, he illuminates different conceptions of the "natural" and the "ordinary" and sheds light on broader social and historical paradigms - and ultimately on the construction of Japan as a nation.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Note on Japanese Names and Terms 1. Introduction to theWeird 2. Natural History of theWeird: Encyclopedias, Spooky Stories, and the Bestiaries of Toriyama Sekien 3. Science of theWeird: Inoue EnryO, Kokkuri, and Human Electricity 4. Museum of theWeird: Modernity, Minzokugaku, and the Discovery of YOkai 5. Media of theWeird: Mizuki Shigeru and Kuchi-sake-onna 6. YOkai Culture: Past, Present, Future Notes Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Michael Dylan Foster is Assistant Professor of Folklore and East Asian Cultures at Indiana University.

Review :
“A provocative addition to the small body of scholarship in English on monsters, the mysterious, and the supernatural in Japan from the early modern period to the present. This timely book . . . offers English readers their first sustained consideration of yõkai . . . from the perspectives of folklore studies and anthropology. Engagingly written from its touching preface to its last sentence, Pandemonium and Parade draws on and converses with an extensive body of Japanese scholarship on yõkai." "This study of the 'weird' in Japan . . . will be the standard work in English on this subject for many years. Rather than being a simple catalogue and commentary of strange beasts and beings, this work provides an analytical chronology of the changing use made of the 'weird' in Japan over a period of three hundred years from the seventeenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century." “Rich and refreshing . . . engaging and spiritedly written . . . Foster’s writing and attitude toward his topic gracefully embrace the two poles of the scholarly and the ludic that he attributes to yōkai discourse through the ages.” "Foster has presented us with an excellent introduction to this corner of Japanese culture, and we are all the richer for it. Most impressively, Foster has managed to write in a way that engages the general reader (or at least the reader with little background knowledge), yet he maintains the academic robustness, scholarly tone, and level of erudition that the subject matter deserves." "This outstanding volume is a welcome addition to English-language resources on Japan's folk culture. Showing familiarity with Japanese scholarship and vernacular culture, Pandemonium and Parade finds the rationale for continuing interest in the yōkai world in everyday needs and concerns." "Whoever thinks that a scholarly book cannot be "fun" has not yet read Michael Foster's Pandemonium and Parade. His work constitutes a rollicking exploration of the seventeenth- through twentieth-century worlds of yōkai, a broadly inclusive term for the phantasmagoria of monsters, ghosts, mysterious apparitions, and inexplicable phenomena that have animated the Japanese cultural landscape for much of the past thousand years. Foster's book is thoughtfully conceived and carefully researched, and it is written in a graceful, occasionally journalistic style that is both suitable to its subject and a pleasure to read." "This is a rare academic tome which can be read with delight and a sense of recognition. . . . As such, Pandemonium and Parade deserves to be read by anyone interested in the strange and mysterious." “One of the most theoretically nuanced and interesting interpretations of Japan’s experience of modernity and post-modernity . . . extremely readable.”